No Walkins, Appointments Required
by Sabina
Summary: George's reap isn't quite what she had expected. Oneshot. Not overly angsty, but enough to warrant it being in the genre. Rated for language and violence but, if you've seen the series, it's nothing you haven't seen or heard before.


George parked her car on the side of the road and looked down at her post-it.

**B. Bauer**

**332 King St**

**ETD 9:03PM**

For once she had an appointment that wasn't in the middle of the work-day. It was getting more difficult to come up with excuses for why she had to leave before five and George thought that Dolores was beginning to suspect something was up. While she would far prefer to be glued to the boob tube right now, it was nice to know she didn't have to rush. The cool evening breeze flowed through George's hair, presenting a refreshing sensation.

George looked at her watch: 8:42. She had twenty-one whole minutes until it happened, but she didn't really want to sit in her car. She fiddled with the post-it in her hand and decided that she would go in and allow for some extra time. It seemed like that kind of nightShe unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out of her car.

She looked around at the different houses on the street and spied number 332 across the street. As she crossed the road and walked up the driveway to the house, she noticed a sign on the door that read "Psychic Readings: No Walk-ins, Appointments Required."

_A psychic?_George had never been one for psychics. She thought they were frauds, out for all they could take.Nothing but fakes making generalstatements that could apply to anything or anybody. She walked up the stoop and opened the door, ringing a bell as she entered.

The foyer, painted a deep purple colour with golden stars of various sizes attached to the walls, was the quintessence of hokum. Decorations – beads, feathers, various symbols – hung from the ceiling and darkened windows. The drapes were black velvet or something. Incense burned in all corners of the room, but none of them seemed to have the same scent, creating an air of disorder. It was all quite ridiculous in George's opinion – even worse than the time Daisy had set up that "psychic" agency to con money out of a dead woman's son. She rolled her eyes and gave a sigh. This would no doubt be interesting.

"Greetings!" called a woman emerging from another part of the house through a beaded curtain. She seemed to float over toward a desk to George's left, her voice soft and fanciful.

_God, is she high?_ George thought to herself, replacing her sceptical look with a guarded smile. "Uh, greetings to you too."

"What can I do for you this evening, miss?" She tilted her head to one side as she talked.

"I'd, uh, like to talk to a Mr or Ms Bauer?"

"Do you have an appointment?"

"Um..." Appointment? No, she obviously didn't have an appointment. "I don't know. I... asked my mother to make the appointment for me. I don't know if she did or not." What the hell? That was lame.

The woman looked at her appointment book, scanning down the page. She seemed troubled. "Are you Katherine Garner?" She looked up at George.

George blinked and began to nod. "Yes, yes. That's me. Katherine Garner." She paused and smiled. "I guess my mom did make the appointment after all. Good old Mom."

"You were supposed to be here twenty minutes ago..." The woman gave her a reprimanding look.

George blinked again and kept smiling. "The traffic out there was just _awful._ You can never be sure about what the traffic is going to be like at this time of night."

The woman just nodded. "Okay... Well, you're lucky that Miss Bauer's evening is free. Some nights she's booked until midnight or one!"

"Oh, gee. Yes... I sure am lucky then." Her face began twitching from smiling for so long. "When can I see her?"

"I'll go see if she can take you now. One moment, please!" She turned around and went back through the beaded curtain. George huffed. God, this would be interesting. This all reminded her of her Grandma Phyllis - she was into all sorts of these weird spiritual things. George's mom always thought she was crazy and irresponsible, but George found her interesting. Crazy, maybe, but interesting and George looked up to her. However, maybe a bit of that sceptical part of her mother had brushed off on her, and that's why she didn't believe in most of this hokey psychic stuff.

She looked at her watch: 8:47. Sixteen minutes.

The floaty woman came back through the beads and over to where George was standing, invading her personal space. George flashed a nervous smile. "Follow me, please. She will see you in a moment."

George followed her back through the beadsand they came into a dark hallway, lit only by various candles on the walls. This seemed to get ever more cliché by the second. The woman brought her to a closed door. "Go in there and sit down at the table. Miss Bauer will join you soon."

_At least she isn't _Madame_ Bauer, _George thought, smirking. The woman opened the door for her and, after George entered the room,she closed the door behind her.

George was very surprised – this room was decorated nothing like the foyer. It had a really comfortable feel to it; George felt rather at home. The walls were without tacky decorationand painted a rather pleasing shade of blue. It had a very different air to it than the front. It almost seemed professional. She sat down in a large, comfy chair at a table in the middle of the room. Another comfy chair sat directly across the table from her. The table was bare except for a vase of small flowers in the middle, giving the room a faintly sweet smell. No crystal balls, no tarot cards, no "magickal" symbols anywhere

After sitting there a minute or two, a faintly smiling womancame in and sat down in the chair across from George. She looked to be around thirty or so. She looked... _normal_. Like anybody you would see walking down the street or at the mall or something. George was more at ease now, but still kept her guard up.

The red-haired woman began grinning out-right and extended her hand out across the table. George shook her hand without reaping her quite yet – she wasn't sure if this was _the _Bauer she was looking for – and returned a smile as genuine as she could muster."My name's Bailey Bauer," she said. "Marcie, my assistant, tells me you're Katherine Garner."

"Uh, yeah. That's me," George replied, smirking on the inside. _B. Bauer. This lady isn't much of a psychic if she actually thinks Katherine Garner is my real name._

Bauer kept smiling and gave a laugh.

"No," she said, shaking her head slightly. "You're right, Georgia Lass. I wouldn't be."

George, awe-struck, opened and closed her mouth several times in an attempt to speak. _How did she – what the FUCK?_ "Who _are_ you?" shedemanded, bursting up out of her chair. "How** –"**

Bauer cut her off, chuckling. "I told you who I was. It was you who weren't being honest with _me._"

"How did you know my name?" George yelled.

"Dear, what did you expect?" The psychic reached out, touching George's hand to calm her down. "You do know where you are, don't you? You're in a psychic's office."

George frowned. She wanted to say there's no such thing as a psychic, but... she had known her name. Nobody but the Reapers knew her name. Not anymore. Georgia Lass was dead as far as the world knew.

"Don't be afraid. Please."

"Afraid? Who's afraid?" George shouted. She narrowed her eyes at the red-haired woman. "Who are you?"

"Calm down," she said quietly. "Just sit down again."

George eyed the woman and sat back downin the chair.

"Look, I know why you're here," Bauer said.

"You do?"

She nodded gravely. "A man I read for earlier today will come into this room in about, oh, six or seven minutes. He will have just found out that his wife has been killed in a car accident, just as I predicted this afternoon, and will mistakenly believe that I had something to do with it. We will exchange a few words and then he will shoot me."

George blinked. "How do you know that?"

"I'm a psychic, dear. I thought that was already apparent."

"Then why don't you run away? If you know he's coming, you can avoid him!"

"That would be cheating, wouldn't it? Besides, you're here. It's already been determined that it will happen. You're welcome to stay and watch if you like. Though, you don't seem like the type who would want to see that." She smiled. "You don't really like death, do you? You relive your own death with everysoul you take."

George grimaced. This was too surreal. Nobody knew about reapers. At least, they weren't supposed to. She felt probed, invaded. "I don't understand how you can be so comfortable with it." She shook her head. "If I had known I was about to die when I did, I would have hightailed it out of there faster than **–"**

Bauer raised her hand. "Don't worry about me. You're only here to do your job."

"If you knew that it was going to happen, how could you go through with reading for him?"

"Everything's eventual, George. You can't avoid death. Why would I avoid a perfectly good opportunity to see what's on the other side? There's no point in putting it off. Besides, you know as well as I do that it would seriously mess things up on your end of things if I were to avoid this confrontation."

"Fuck that! Administration would figure it out somehow, things would go on. How can you let yourself _die_?"

"You still don't get it. You should know this by now. How many souls have you taken? Hundreds, right? You can't get around it."

"But you have a choice! You know about it before it's going to happen. You can changethings! You can decide not to die. Not many people have that chance!" George sighed. "I didn't."

"And you can't stand to see someone forgo it."

"You could live! How could you let yourself die? Think of all the things you'll miss out on."

"How could I let myself live? Think of all the things I'll miss out on."

George shook her head and wiped her face with her palm. "You have a choice. Think of how many people's lives you could change."

"I changed Mike Steers'slife, didn't I?"

George vaguely recalled the name Steers – Daisy's post-it for this afternoon had been a Steers. The irony gave a quick tickle before passing over her. George was too pissed off right now for irony. "It's not your fault he's going to over-react!"

"I shouldn't have told him. It's my own fault."

"You really want to die."

"I don't want to live in a time that I don't belong to."

George extended her hand across the table just as Bauer had done when she first entered. She closed her eyes, obviously still very upset. "Here." Bailey Bauer smiled and extended her hand to meet George's. George took her other hand and placed it on top of the psychic's and removed her soul.

"You can't fuck with fate, George."

She sighed. "No, you can't."

George stood up from the chair and walked out of the room. She closed the door behind her and leaned against the wall. _That was fucked up._ She stood there a moment and looked down at her watch. 9:01. She scurried down the back hallway and sat down in a chair around the corner. Hunched over with her elbows on her knees, she rubbed her forehead. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the post-it. Staring at it, she knew that she had done the right thing, but _God!_ How could that woman let this happen to her?

Back in the foyer, she heard a man come in and demand to see Bauer. The assistant, Marcie or whatever Bauer had called her, shrieked. He was obviously not hiding the fact that he had a gun. The sound of the beaded curtain crashing down on the floor and an opening and slamming of the door echoed back to George. There were a few moments of silence before two gunshots rang throughout the place. Marcie shrieked again and ran out the front doors. Steers left the room and fled.

George crept back down the hallway and back into Bauer's office. Bauer sat in her chair as she was before, her body having fallen onto the floor. Blood pooled under the chairs and tables. She smiled at George like she had when she met her.

"Thank you," she said, as she got up out of the chair and walked out of this world and into the next.


End file.
